Choices: How Do You Make Them?
by John M. Grohol, Psy.D.
January 28, 1998

Throughout our lives, we are faced with making difficult decisions about
the road we will take. This ranges from smaller, less important decisions
such as buying a new car or whether to attend a particular party, function,
or conference, to more important, huge decisions, such as whether to
marry, purchasing a home, deciding whether or when to have a child.
How do we make these choices in our lives? Is there a better way?

Most people make choices about the smaller things on-the-fly,
quickly weighing one's needs and desires with one's resources.
Should I eat the cheeseburger at McDonald's, or get a chicken
sandwich? Well, that depends on whether or not I have enough
money for the chicken sandwich and what I feel like eating today.
We make the decision and move on. After all, I can always eat
something different for lunch tomorrow. Should I buy that shirt?
If I like it enough, convince myself I need it, and have the resources to do so (e.g., money), sure.

But when it comes down to life's larger decisions, things are not
so simple. We make these larger decisions only a few times in
our lives, and in some cases, only once. How can we make sure
we're making the right decision at these times? Is there
such a thing as a right decision in the first place?? Is there an
easier way to make this decision?

First, we must acknowledge that such decisions, because they are
by definition very important to ourselves and our lives, include an
emotional, non-rational aspect. That's alright, as long as we acknowledge
there is that aspect and give it some weight. The important thing to
realize is not to give it all the weight, as some people sometimes
do. We are not purely emotional creatures, so our major life decisions
shouldn't be based purely on the emotional reasons.

Second, it often helps people to sit down and write out a list
of the pros and cons of the choices involved. Let's take buying a house
as an example. We could list the pros and cons of buying this home
we found in a charming neighborhood the other day. Yes, it is charming
(an emotional aspect), which is a pro. Other pros might include that
it has a 2-car garage, lots of space, a modern kitchen, and is
beautifully refinished. Now, before we move on to the cons, we
want to assign weight values to each thing we listed. Space is
important to us, so it gets a "10" (10 is the most important, 1 is the least important).
A modern kitchen is less
important, so it might get a "5." Our list will look something like
this so far:

Pros

Value

Cons

Value

Space
Kitchen
Charmingness
Quality of interior/exterior
2-car garage

10
5
4
8
7

Total / #=Average:

34 / 5 = 6.8

Total / #=Average:

Now we take a look at some of the cons... It's a far drive from our
work, and that's important to us because it creates a daily hassle
and daily stress. It is also in an area of town which doesn't have
a lot of conveniences nearby, such as a supermarket or gas station.
There are fewer bathrooms than we'd like, and the basement isn't
finished. Putting these into the chart, we get something which looks like:

Pros

Value

Cons

Value

Space
Kitchen
Charmingness
Quality of interior/exterior
2-car garage

10
5
4
8
7

Closeness to work
Conveniences
# of bathrooms
Unfinished basement

10
8
5
3

Total / #=Average:

34 / 5 = 6.8

Total / #=Average:

26 / 4 = 6.5

This is an obviously simplified example. A real-life decision might have 30 or 40 items
in each column. But as you can see by our average totals, 6.8 is higher than 6.5.
That means that the benefits (the "pros") outweigh the drawbacks (the "cons").
Buy the house!
Our decision, which includes emotional factors, has been made for us, as
long as we are honest about the values we give each factor. This
doesn't work if you're trying to convince yourself one way or another. You need
to be as honest and objective with yourself as possible.

Naturally, such a decision-making table may not help everyone for all of
life's big decisions. There is nothing which can make the deciding a whole
lot easier, or better yet, make the decisions for us. That is a part of living, though --
making the decision and taking responsibility for the choice you have made.
It's not easy. But then again, neither is life a lot of days.

Good luck with making the big decisions in your life. I'm facing one and will
try to put into practice what I've written here and see if it helps clear the
emotional fog which often surrounds such big decisions.

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Last reviewed:
By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on
29 Mar 2015
Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved.